


Nothing Left

by WarlordMan162



Category: I Am Number Four (2011), The Lorien Legacies - All Media Types, The Lorien Legacies - Pittacus Lore
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Other, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Invasion, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-01
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2019-01-07 23:11:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12242478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WarlordMan162/pseuds/WarlordMan162
Summary: On the last day of the war, six Garde infiltrated the Mogadorian Hawks Nest Mountain Base in West Virginia.Only two staggered out, barely clinging to life.Without the power of the Elders, humanity had no choice to assert victory by using any means necessary to destroy the Mogadorian Fleet. Some surrendered. Others fought. But the world was changed.Surviving in a wasteland and the last of their kind, Nine and Marina must fight to stay alive and unite the Human Garde, in hopes of one day returning home.





	Nothing Left

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you all enjoy this! I've been working on this story for about a month, but only recently got everything down. It's pretty much a sad story that combines elements of The Last of Us and The Book of Eli to make a darker take on what the Loric would be like if they lost the war and the Human Garde were almost all there was left to fight another day. Please get some tissues, some sad music going, and enjoy Chapter One!

Shouts and roars echo off the cracked walls of the tunnels. Some of the primal cries make their way from the massive, iron gate—beasts that were not set free to try and kill us—but most come from that horrid chamber. That place with the bodies of our human kin, the place where we lost.

Leading up to the control room is a wrecked section of hallway. The walls in this branch of the tunnel are blackened with blaster fire. In the middle of the cold, rocky floor is a wide, gaping crevice. Blood pools around it and drips into the dark abyss below. Careful with Nine, I peer down the hole to see three figures dead on the bottom of the fissure. One of them, thin and slender, sits atop two larger, paler beings.

Six, dead atop of Phiri Dun-Ra and Adam.

My eyes blur and their bodies merge together. I can't see them anymore, my night vision Legacy failing me as blood spills into my eyes from the scratches on my face. And my tears. No matter how hard I try, my telekinesis cannot reach down far enough to pick them up and carry them out of this hellhole. I can feel Nine's Legacies fleeing my body, meaning I can't risk running down the fissure walls either. Even if I could, my shoulder's dislocated and my other arm is holding Nine. I'll never be able to give them a proper burial. They died down here alone, killed by that monster. That bitch who stole Legacies from our world, who killed Fleur and Bertrand. I'm glad Phiri's dead, but at the cost of my friends? My family?

Another explosion rocks the cave, loosening more boulders from the ceiling and the floor. That must've been how Six fell—an explosion broke off part of the precipice, dropping her down there into this canyon, likely made by Adam's Legacy. The heat of the  _Delta_ 's cannons reaches my neck, and I instinctively begin to radiate cold. Mentally using my Legacy, I ice over the crack in the earth, hoping it might just keep them safe from Sam's warship. It's the best I can do at the moment.

"Goodbye, friend," I say to them, pressing a limp hand to the icy covering. I shrug my working shoulder and turn toward the exit. It's marked by the orange glow of fire. "Come on, Nine."

My feet crunch against the scorched stone as we pass the tunnel of our first battle. My giant igloo still stands there, parts of it caved in, the broken chunks black and smoking from Sam's firestorm. The ash gets thicker the closer I get to the maw-like opening in the mountain. Just a bit further now. _Please just h_ _ang on_.

Outside the mountain, the forest is burning everywhere. Smoke gets into my eyes and my nose, the intense crackling of burning trees and grass. Rotting flesh and burning hair billow up and mix with the putrid air. Far to my right, jutting out of the valley, are twisted pieces of metal from the _Anubis_. Above it all looms the warship  _Delta_ , its main cannon fixed directly at the mouth of the cave. Its frequency is nowhere near as strong as the cannon the  _Anubis_ wielded, but my teeth still chatter and my bones shake as the lights within it mix merge into a beam focused on the mountain.

"Hey, hold your fire!" I try to shout, but it comes out as a weak cough. "Ella, tell Sam to stop—!"

Everything is red.

The explosion is so loud and so penetrating that I can feel my heart skip a beat. For a moment, all my senses are gone and replaced with a feeling or weightlessness.

Emptiness.

And betrayal.

Then they all return, and I'm sprinting down the burning, barren mountain as fast as I can. It's been a while since I had a reason to actually use my Legacy of Superspeed, and now I am combining it with my Legacy of Cold to keep me and Nine from burning alive. I sprint past stripped and broken trees and don't stop even when the soles of my shoes melt off and my feet ache with cuts and bruises from stones and hills. I don't stop even when I can feel my lungs weep with fluids as the smoke becomes the only air I inhale. I will not turn back. I will not stop.

* * *

I finally come to a halt when the forest is just a hellish glow in the distance. Watching the fires, I take my time to get my bearings. Sam shot at us! I can understand why maybe he couldn't have seen us, but why wouldn't Ella detect us heading out of the cave? Did she get hurt? Maybe the Entity—Legacy, whatever it's called—leaving her body also took away her powers? I want to ponder these questions, to see my friends, to get some help. But I can't think about that right now. Nine is maimed beyond what I can heal, and I cannot get him help if we get blown to pieces by a warship or burn in a forest fire.

I keep moving.

_Please be okay,_ I think, for all my friends. All those who, last I saw, are still alive.

After another twenty minutes or so, we arrive at a gas station jutting out of the countryside like a beacon. Its lights are off, but that won't necessarily stop me, now that my night vision seems to be working just fine again, other than a slight red tint. To my luck, Ra's claws didn't take out my eyes. We are just a few miles from the empty mining town I had stopped in earlier, and yet the light from the mountain still rages into the night sky. Behind the gas station, I rest Nine against the redbrick wall. He's not doing so great—Nine's hair is shorter than I've ever seen it, much of his long mane having been ripped out by Setrákus Ra, the stump on his arm is dry, crimson, marked in black, almost scaly sores that run all the way up his bare shoulders—and his breathing grows more and more shallow with each inhale. I am not sure how much longer he has left. His eyes haven't opened since he transferred his Legacies to me.

"Wait here," I say, half-expecting a reply.

I awkwardly use my telekinesis to open the door, still having neglected to pop my shoulder back in place. Luckily, this one gas station in the middle of Nowhere, West Virginia, happens to have a pharmacy off to the side. Despite all of the craziness I've seen, and all of the horrible situations I have endured, I do not know a damn thing about shock treatment. I am not sure if there is a medication, or if it'll even be effective. First, I need to take care of my arm, and then I can start worrying about medical supplies.

Using my healing Legacy combined with my naturally enhanced strength and telekinesis, I tug at my dislocated arm like what John once showed me. It pops back into place, shooting a bolt of pain through my spine and a grunt between my gritted teeth. After that's taken care of, I vault over the cash register and grab a bag to collect whatever meds I might need. In the mirror to my left, the diagonal scratches along my face are puffy with blood and torn flesh. I press my hand to each cut while I use my telekinesis to pull random bottles and boxes of medical tablets, hoping that maybe one of them will work. When Nine is well enough to walk on his own, we can head back to Hawks Nest and maybe these supplies will help whoever made it out.

Light suddenly flows into the store. I take my blood-soaked hand from my face and turn to the storefront. The headlights of a huge pickup truck sear into the gas station, the engine idle and the radio blaring with news stories. _Humans_ , I think as I slowly let a wave of relief wash over me. I focus my enhanced hearing on the truck, wondering what else is going on. I don't know how long it has been since John radioed Lawson to open fire. Hopefully the rest of the world is doing better than we are here. 

> **"...third of the population is either dead, with at least twenty thousand people reported miss— _zzt_ —buildings just...gone. There were these gaps in the skyline. We could all see it from the— _zzt_ —This just in, we have received reports of warships deploying some form of agent in retaliation to the alleged 'global counter'—"**

The radio—already breaking up from the warship's signal jacker—suddenly cuts off, and it's replaced by the splitting  _CRACK_  of a rifle round.

The bullet tears through the glass, past a shelf of potato chips, and exits out the back wall just half a meter from my head. I duck down underneath an aisle and begin to radiate a defensive field of cold. These have to be humans, right? They're listening to the radio, driving in a truck, and are clearly using Earthen firearms. But why would they fire on _me_?

A car door opens and then firmly shuts, boots slapping on the concrete still wet from Six's storm. Glass breaks and crunches as the human enters the station. There's more than one set of footsteps; at least five people have come in. One of them loudly pulls the bolt of the rifle back, loading another round. They must be less than two aisles away. Oh, what I would give for Six's invisibility right now.

"We know yer here," a thick, young country accent calls into the store. "Sorry 'bout the scare, but we thought you were one o' those things from the mountain."

I stay frozen in place, the cold radiating from my body growing slightly more intense with every passing second. It's not that I don't trust humans, but after the past few hours, I am not as willing to put myself out in the open for people with weapons. With my Legacies, I could probably take them all on. I hope I won't have to hurt anyone, that maybe this group just came here to get supplies and then leave. However, good fortune hasn't really been on my side recently. Still, I might need to protect these men from the Mogs if need be. We lost the battle, but that doesn't mean we have to stop helping the people whose land we used as the battleground.

Slowly rising from the aisles, I stand with my hands above my head, trying to look as nonthreatening as possible. "I'm not armed."

The man closest to me is dressed in hunting fatigues and orange reflectors on his shoulders, his blond hair buzzed close to his scalp. He has a rather light brown beard, poorly shaved, his rifle slung over his shoulder. When he smiles, I notice his teeth are mostly yellow, a couple of molars missing.

"Well, hello there," he says, his voice different from the last, but still heavily southern. The man must be around twenty, maybe younger. "What're you doin' out this late."

"Or rather," a man with red hair who I hadn't even noticed says, off to the side and rifle in his hands, "this early."

A few of them snicker at his awkward remark. I try my best to keep my face neutral, but catch myself glancing around the room, sizing them up as I had seen Six do many times before. "Just passing through. You guys ran into any of those things yet? The aliens?"

"Hmm," the red-haired man mutters, shrugging his arms as if to show off his rifle. He's more burly than the blond guy in front of the storefront, but he has less facial hair and softer features. I catch a scent of animus in the air. "You got a name, darlin'?"

I hesitate, lowering my hands to my sides, feeling the icy energy beginning to catch and smother the moisture in the air. Just in case. I finally reply, "Marina. Yours?"

"Mmm, Marina, huh?" the blond guy in front of me repeats loudly, rolling the "r" in my name. "Name's Wilfred. Will for short. Ya ain't from around here, are ya, Marina? What brings you through these parts?"

"No, I'm...," I start to realize this was probably a bad idea. These men don't need my help, and they're certainly not interested in me offering it. "Just figured I could get some medicine with all the invasion stuff going on—"

"You a Mexican, Marina?" a man, older and paler than the other two, with thin dark-brown hair interrupts.

"No," I reply uncomfortably. "Um, what does that have to do with—?"

"Y'know, it ain't all too safe up here now with these aliens runnin' around."

"Uh-huh, thanks for the advice," I say in as strong a voice I can. "I'm gonna go now, but stay safe from the..."

"Oh, really?" Wilfred chimes in, not moving as I start for the door. He says it more as a statement than a question. "You can't be goin' out on yer own now. We all gotta look after one another in the current situation."

"Yeah, well," I subtly nudge him aside with telekinesis, "thanks for the offer, but I think I'm gonna pass on that—"

He grabs my arm, then my side, and my back, pulling me toward him and his disgusting grin. "We can protect you."

"Let go," I order. He clutches my waist tighter until I slap him with an icy palm. Wilfred howls in pain, clutching his frostbitten cheek. "I warned you!"

The balding dark-haired man grabs me from behind, his arms keeping mine pinned to my sides as the red-haired man closes in. He sets his rifle down on the floor and starts to take off his orange vest, then his fatigues as he approaches me. They ignore my screams and pleads for them to let go, and when I start to yell for Nine's help, I realize that my cries will only land on deaf ears. If I'm going to survive this, or at least with dignity, I'll have to fight them on my own. As the red-haired man starts pulling down his pants, I use my mind I fire the gun into his leg. The round is so powerful that it amputates his foot from his ankle. Not where I was trying to aim, but it'll do.

The man grappling me loosens his grip upon the blast of the rifle and seeing his friend's foot come off. I slam my head backward into his nose and, as he falls to the ground in pain, I use my gelid fingers as claws to gouge out his eyes. His screams, like mine did, fall on deaf ears. Before I can get up, Wilfred drives the back of my head into the linoleum floor and puts his hands around my neck. It knocks the wind out of me and stars cloud my vision. My attempt to knock him off will telekinesis fails due to the attack on my head.

"You thought you could get away from us, you little bitch?" he whispers, the voice of pure malice. Wilfred doesn't seem all too interested in raping me anymore, but simply in avenging his mutilated friends. That doesn't mean I will take it easy on him when I get out of this. "Ya wanna play dirty, is that right?"

I grab his hands from around my neck and freeze. The cold is almost even too intense for me, and I wouldn't be surprised if his hands shattered like shaved ice soon after. Wilfred screams and looks down at his blue extremities, giving me a chance to wriggle free. I push him into the ceiling—literally—with a clear mind and a very sharp icicle. He dangles there, twitching as the life leaves his body, skull stuck in the panelling and the frozen obelisk. Part of me thinks this was the first time I killed a human, but I can't be so sure. All I know is that this is the first time I didn't feel bad about hurting one of them.

Someone else gets out of the truck. I pick up one of their rifles and fire through the display window, reloading at rapid speed. My sore shoulder throbs, but it is worth the deterrent of keeping any more of these human hicks from trying that bullshit again. The vehicle's engine roars louder and I launch a barrage of icicles at it. The headlights go out, but the gas station stays illuminated. I look down at my burning inferno of a leg in shock. Wrapped around my ankle are bright, intricate patterns of light that brand into my skin. I fall to the ground in shock for the scars, in sadness for my friends, in hatred for the humans who just tried to...

"Oh, shit. She's one o' them aliens!" I hear someone from the truck yell. "We gotta git outta here!"

Some of the other rednecks protest against leaving their friends behind, but soon the truck pulls away from the gas station in a hurry. I manage to fire another ice blast at it before the truck gets too far off.

"Yeah, that's right, run away!" I shout out the fleeing pair of red taillights. "If anyone else wants to try anything, you'll have it worse, you understand?!"

The truck disappears down the road. However, I can't follow it. No matter how irate my feelings toward the human race are at the moment, what resides on my leg is now more important.

Six markings go up my right ankle—three old, three new. Numbers One, Two, and Three, of course. But who else? Five and Six, definitely, but who is the third in this group?

John? Or...?

I grab the bag of supplies and round the back of the gas station to see Nine slumped over on his side. His one good arm is draped over his bare chest and his torn-out hair doesn't hide the lifelessness in his face. I push my hand against his chest, searching for a heartbeat, respiration,  _anything_ , but he's just still.

"Nine? Oh, please be okay," I mutter, although I may be talking to myself. "Please, I know it's been a shit day, but I need you to wake up, okay?" Please."

I turn him onto his back and attempt chest compressions. His ribs crack and fracture under each press. He'll be mad as hell when he wakes up. But at least he  _will_ wake up. I don't know how long I go on trying to revive him before I dump the contents of the medication bag all over the cement. Nothing I find reads  _anti-shock treatment_ or anything or the sort. I go back to CPR and eventually try to follow Adelina's primitive belief and pray.

Nine doesn't respond to anything I do. I panic as he lies there, lifeless, face pale as the moon that hangs over the horizon. Nine is the confident one, our soldier. He's one of the reasons any of us survived this long.

The boy who fought Setrákus Ra for us in Dulce.

The boy who offered all of us a place to stay when we had no real home.

The guy who trained with me and taught me how to use my powers strategically.

The warrior who comforted Ella when she learned about her family.

The Garde who brought champagne to our first official dinner together _as_ a family.

The idiot who talked too much that someone put their life on the line for him.

That cocky son of a bitch who could barely compose himself for an apology over his friend.

That's who Nine was. That's who he is. He's my friend, my brother, my Garde.

I take a breath, stop panicking, and realize that while all of my scars appeared, he should have the six as well—two, if he is dead. It's a horrifying thing to ponder, but I must do it all the same. I peel back the right pant-leg, looking at the scars as the dawn finally starts to break. The purple and orange glow of the coming sun pushes overhead. It is difficult to believe that only twelve hours ago, we went into that mountain with the confidence that we would win this war. But Six was always right. Confidence gets you killed. Whether we won or not, I don't know. If humanity landed a victory against the Mogs, I don't know. Either way, whatever happens today, this world will be a changed place.

Streams of sunlight rise gently over the mountains as I check if I am alone now. The scars slowly go up Nine's leg.

One...

Two...

Three...

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this first chapter. Let me know if there were any grammatical or writing errors, and give me your opinion on the work. I am open to all forms of criticism and am always looking for ways to improve my writing. Look forward to Chapter Two in a few weeks!


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